Ancient Calendar More Accurate Than Ever—Harvest Lammastide—When Nature and Heavens Sparkle & Entice
ANCIENT CALENDAR MORE ACCURATE THAN EVER—BACK-TO-THE-LAND ETHOS—MOTHER EARTH GUIDES US HOOMAN (Insecure) WRITERS, ARTIST-CREATORS, MUSICIANS, COPS, HOSPITAL & CONSTRUCTION WORKERS & esp. FARMERS
FIRST WEDNESDAY BLOGMOBILE ROLLCALL from COSMOS for WRITERS to EXIT LAVATUBE HIDEAWAY & GREET ANCIENT LUGHNASADH/LAMMAS & HER PERSEID METEOR SHOWER SHOOTING STAR PARADE
SIRIUS Summer Dog Days Predict H2O, PERSEID & η-AQUARID Meteors💥
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more
George Gordon of Gight, Lord Byron, died 1824 aged 36
August has traditionally had pride of place in European culture. Normally frozen like Juneau, AK at same latitude 58ºN, this year northerners join Mediterranean nations basking in unaccustomed warmth of Gulf Stream marvels carried relentlessly from Florida and Bermuda to reach beyond Iceland, Faroes, the Baltic, to Archangel & Nordkapp.
Sunspots Kindle Britain/Europe’s Hottest-Ever Temperatures, Pacific El Niño
An unusually large CME—coronal mass ejection—caused when a large sunspot curves round to face Earth during solar maximum—featured first week August in Washington State’s far NorthWest territory bordering Canadian Vancouver Island’s whale migration route—folk memory or consciousness trigger?
Mud Lake, WA rt., unusual Aurora latitude 47ºN—same as St.Michael’s Glastonbury tor, Newport, Bath, Somerset, Glamorgan & Roman market town Caer Gwent Chepstow, S.Wales—all with music festival Severn-estuary-related connection2 subterranean faultline hotsprings in Somerset & Brittany—seemed to send a signal last week from the Heavens—Aurora Borealis usually a feature of winter skies—to festival party-goers excited to return to mask-free music in Britain, Berlin, Monte Carlo, Miami, Santa Cruz, Mendocino, Monterrey, London’s SouthBank Centre and NYC’s Central Park.
Stormy Times Call4 Stormy Measures—Can WiFi Forestry Replace Corn Dolly-Clyack Sheaf
All along Scotland’s North Coast—Aberdeenshire, Moray Firth, former Banffshire, traditional inshore fishing boats like this oak vessel in Gamrie Bay plied waters from Peterhead to Elgin, Black Isle, Highland Fault-Glenfeshie-Caledonian Canal ©G.Robertson
From birth in the Ocean on ancient Pictish Burghead Fortress’s North Shore beach, STORM is daughter of a long tradition of Clavie-burning crew of Fire Festival-every-Quarter men & youths who shoulder a burning barrel of tar, below rt. around the coast town dispensing gifts of charred oak to residents, then hoist it to Doorie fire altar on fort’s highest rock to smoulder and burn, saving one ember for next time.
STORM, the gigantic puppet robot doll made entirely of environmental waste, is THIS WEEK gracing Edinburgh’s groovy Festival Fringe with her unique presence. Joint Creators Trees for Life, Glenfeshie, Invernessshire original Findhorn Foundation spin-off guru Alan Watson-Featherstone’s 30-yr forest, and Vision Mechanics Storm’s creators, are together spreading the word on #NewAgeConsciousness & tree-planting
Sunspot Triggers Summer Aurora & Pacific Tropical Storm Stevo
Across the pond, Hawai’ians pride themselves—nay boast—of another goddess: higher-than-Everest 29,000ft Mauna Loa (calculated to snow-covered peak from deep ocean floor). She’s a hurricane-buster, famed for side-swiping every ocean impediment that comes her way—Pele-speak for local goddess’s near-miraculous ability to redirect storms north and rain south away from her unique mountain home. Goddess Pele conspires with brother El Niño & volcanic sisters worldwide to spew lava when and wherever possible over machine/mechanical devices to make us (hoomans) wake up!
Ten years ago I was able to post an El Niño video without hassle—they want premium content now 😦
Check out how Pele’s volcanic brethren either side of the Equator are holding our oceans steady in August 2022 on run-up to 8/8 Lionsgate. CMEs turn on a switch. Voilà volcanic mayhem worldwide as Stromboli, Vesuvius, Etna, Sangay Ecuador & Kyushu’s Sakurajima react to Lammas sunspot activity. Twin-sis Mauna Kea spouts from her lava tube in Hawai’i Volcanoes NPS temporarily CLOSED, hoping sunspots & Perseid meteors will slow later in month for reopening. Meantime Big Island virtual pix…
Perseid meteors sparkle to Earth from their vortex in Algol’s binary eye of Medusa clutched in heroic hands as Perseus rescues Andromeda from Cetus, the Whale, below rt. Sirius Canis major rises East to bring breathless Dog Days, the Nile bursting its banks to flood Luxor during hot rainless dry nights.
Appropriately, Guatemalan Elders have known for decades that human ascension predicted by their ancestors has already begun. Daykeeper Hunbatz Men, modern Elder of the Guatemalan Maya, foresees no apocalypse, but encourages deep meditation and generosity to trigger joy & gratitude in a thankless world. Similarly, Islam uses prayer and gift-giving as a discipline.
Signs of the [End] Times or Birth of a New Age?
Judaic scripture [Revelation uses sacred numerology and dramatic descriptions of the Rapture and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—war, pestilence, famine and death to symbolize the End of Days.
Arab sacred texts repeat the need for constant prayer by the devoted in order to be saved. The Maya believe that sharing their higher understanding handed down by their elders from the time of their Ancestors will save the human race from itself. Maya wisdom says the New Age began four years ago.
Ailkey Brae, above bottom left, is classic example of 5,000 years squeezed into Lammas week: Aikey Horse Fair, held as recently as 1980s on the harvest stance below Aikey Brae Recumbent Stone Circle [RSC] twins with Culsalmond, at entrance to Glens of Foudland—also RSC territory—where on St.Serf’s day in July, tradition held St. Sair’s Fair on the “market stance” field of Jericho next to its [ruined] RSC. Biblical refs aside, St. Sair was patron of Colpy, sanctified annually at neighbouring Williamston well.
Burning Man, Combine Harvesters, Plant New Trees for Old Times
Meanwhile Black Rock in the Nevada Desert, two hours North of Reno, fave tent-city for Burning Man l.above, long before Covid, will run again mask-free this year August 28-September 5th-a post-pandemic event: main tickets $575—$100 more than in 2020. Tents, camping, food vendors festival materials included.
If you are shivering in goosebump land because of Jack Nicholson’s 1980 psychological thriller, The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1977 Stephen King novel, you are wise to keep head down, windows closed as your campervan screeches into high gear mounting 7,000-ft Donner Pass. Kubrick moved King’s Overlook Hotel to Washington state to avoid clash with the real Overlook, which will accommodate late festival-goers as spare camping back-up. Nightmare city!
FIRING-THE-GRID IN FEBRUARY 2023
While we’re staying cool and hydrating hourly through this heatwave, it’s good to plan ahead for a world super-togetherness event, Fire-the-Grid2 February 21, 2023. World meditation focus on that day will peak at the moment of 11:11a.m., so plan to be seated, safe in your comfort zone ready to feel joy—biblical rapture—for minimum five minutes by 11:07. The Universe is giving you four minutes to prepare.
Agriculture Adaptable to ReNew-able/ReOldie-Wayz
Sentimental throwback time, above :agriculture eclipsing summer in winter: Kirkton of Bourtie top, farm steading in winter of 1981 later converted to posh modern (granite) house complex; lower: RSC same farmer’s field with summertime barley bales rolled like missing megaliths against midwinter sunset in S.W. Kirkton of Bourtie stone circle, glimpsed from the Old Manse.
TRADITION LINGERS IN THE OLD WORLD
Traditionalists are still rampant in Europe—nay Colonialism never died. Countries bordering the former “Silk Road” were affected by opening of the Suez Canal, Qanātu as-Suways, 1859, linking the Red Sea & Mediterranean, as 1500 years of travel became a short 120-mile ocean hop, skip & jump between the North Atlantic and southern Indian Ocean.
Egypt is main beneficiary, as water level—Nile linked to SIRIUS rising—became controlled: only loss was having to re-site iconic Abu Simbel temple to higher ground. Ethiopia, Iran and Arabian Gulf nations boomed as the Red Sea dried up.
With such history of drought & water-consciousness, it’s satisfying to watch Saudi ingenuity triumph in the desert. Snaking for 100 miles from Red Sea shoreline, construction on the wondrous temperate-climate-controlled triple level high-rise mirrored city, THE LINE has begun. Two sub-levels house train track & infrastructure, leaving street level for glass-enclosed gardens, theatres, offices, 24-hour restaurants, recreational pools, sports arenas and a 100-mile shopping complex.
No cars or trucks. Completion is due 2030.
All Stops Out for Dream Concepts & Dealing with the HEAT
THE LINE Saudi dream-city makes for interesting contrast.
Proposed as robotic-press-button permanently cool, totally-enclosed 100%-temperature-controlled habitat along a new RedSea-DeadSea highway, The LINE will bring artificial light-cum-air-conditioning where only camels plodded before. Unlike the Saudi rail link which serves Mecca from the coast during annual Hajj for Eid gift-giving after the Ramadan fast, the LINE breaks new ground, heads for mountainous terrain where shopping, walking, pool-dip coffee-klatching become the norm over minaret calls, mosques and touching prophet Mohammed’s A.D.605 Black Stone.
Veteran Song Circle/Fire Festival Traditions Bring Communities Together
If the thought of camping out in mud-soaked portaloo-contaminated rain-drenched fairground conditions in Reno NV, top, gives you goosebumps, think again.
Those running the show have learned from past Music Festivals—Newbury, Glastonbury, Big Sur, Woodstock, to current Leeds, London’s LLCM Meltdown Festival & 4 Scots fans THIS WEEK Edinburgh Festival Fringe— do your own thing—be gentle with the Earth, our Mother—plant a tree yourself—Add your 21stC futurist consciousness—and a donation—2Storm & the Forest
Beyond Uranus or Back Underground in Writers’ LavaTube Hideaway
NASA’s recent launch of its James Webb telescope reveals unprecented images of Uranus, top middle left—in my oldie-but-goodie mind joining V.ger and Spock in that uncharted area beyond the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt—Spock-Speak image top middle rt. Alien Klingon ‘wessel’ ditching in San Francisco Bay, Spock in white, Scotty in charge of whales—movie Star Trek IV the Voyage Home.
If URANUS’ moons and her vertical axis [c.f. Saturn and Jupiter on the horizontal] delight and inspire you to plant another garden in the Earth—from above or below—go for it. Plant up a storm
The gardening Caledonian pine tree-planter in me wants to stay topside all the time. But my writers’ Muse is a stickler for personal discipline—that’s freedom in subterranean #lavatubespeak!
8/8 LionsGate this week & Lammas goes on for another three. Enjoy. ©2022Marian Youngblood
Nighttime Chat with Ancestors in Dreamtime Taps Universal Subconscious to Quiet Fear bring Calm
NIGHTTIME CHATS WITH ANCESTORS IN DREAMTIME TAPS UNIVERSAL SUBCONSCIOUS TO QUIET FEAR, BRING CALM—THE UNCONSCIOUS HEALING METHOD
First Wednesday Writers‘ Assignation w/Mother Earth Topside to HEAL post-Emergence from Depths of Subterranean Wo/Man Cave
There are drawbacks to spending writing time predominately below-ground, but then one’s time is one’s own. This has been a boon during our two-year hiatus from #RealLife. Especially if great-grand-auntie Minnie & Co hold forth from their gallery EVERY night in Dreamtime.
Oldies’ #Vintage Gardening Method—Simple Job vs. iGen Virtual or Millennials’ Truckathon Total-Clear Techniques
Let your joy explode your questions. All that matters will fall into place and you will know—without thinking—easily. Drop burdens of separateness and all strivings to gain knowledge and come into the wholeness… All is one.
Let us unite.
Dorothy Maclean message from the Devas in Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic Findhorn Foundation Press, 2010
While British school/university curriculum continues through June, in U.S. Memorial Day weekend topped teenage graduation ceremonies adding a new virtual voice, as they enter ‘real’ life via their iPhones. Life, they might find, especially one guided by our revered tween-and-twenties iGen-Gen-Z offspring (probably to Millennial parents)—oh dear newest graduates join an almost totally VIRTUAL WORLD—think everything is doable because it can be simulated electronically.
During World Medical Meltdown, Nations Return to Traditional Ways—Summer Music-Fire Festivals—Burning Man 14thC Version
Images below pull heartstrings, coming as they do from another era—a time when the world was safe from rabid disease and the unpredictable destiny of the human mind to conquer it—when masks were something you wore to a fancy dress party or masquerade: from left, Black Rock, Nevada desert giant Burning Man ready to light. Camping out over 3-4 days for music festivals like Woodstock brought out community spirit; music comes in all sizes—staircase in Valparaiso lol. Tarot pick to guide us through. Lower l.secretly all waiting for solstitial moonrise ©MCYoungblood Hill of Barra Kirkton of Bourtie stone circle RSC 6/21/11 extreme moonrise Metonic cycle; lastly— Gustav Klimt‘s golden phase goddess of Health and Medicine, Hygieia—we should know cos she holds caduceus symbol of medical knowledge.
Nations like Pakistan, Japan, S.Korea and most of the former British Colonial regimes have a long history of ‘grow-your-own’. They are geared to help each other manage food production and delivery, when times are hard, with many farming families sharing organic harvests in simple community eating places. Street vendor/outdoor eating is becoming popular in cold countries, too as summer progresses.
Not all countries choose the food-share option, however—some can barely feed their own homeless. While others—more affluent, or like UAR-Dubai-Iranian bloc dedicated to sharing summer festivals and wealth, have led—with European help—to establish secure food-emergency supply chain. Attention via smartphones/instant messaging worldwide, idolizing hospital epidemic docs and medical workers, has elevated 24-hour non-stop dedication to their job to near-angelic proportions—slotting them firmly in the Spirit realm. Health Angel Spirit-Mother figure Hygieia, above Klimt oil & gold on canvas, rules with her [serpent-entwined] rod!
Pure 22-carat Gold symbol of wealth from time immemorial—precious metal mined & worked by ancient cultures: Islam, Assyrian Egyptian, Rome as their ultimate show of power. Left Caduceus Gk.= staff of life, entwined by serpents of pagan spirit world, imparting secret occult knowledge to the initiate. Still used in hospitals. rt. Full regalia: Gold Coach for the Jubilee. Her Majesty hasn’t sprung a platinum one.
All stops are out in London for nonagenarian HM Queen’s Platinum Jubilee parade events involving the royal gold coach, the monarch’s priceless heirloom regalia, with full retinue attending of every member of every Euro royal house from Hohenzollern, Battenberg [now Windsor], Romanov, and Hesse to Monaco, Malta and Gibraltar. Every wearable Guards uniform will be worn, horses shod & cannon & gun salutes performed to the National Anthem over two weeks in June, anniversary of her 1952 coronation.
Typically for the tiny monarch—whose miniature frame can only just hold bucket and spade—focus on her Queen’s Green Canopy features strongly during lockdown, with tree-planting by other royals too. While no longer physically able to ride horseback, Her Majesty adores the outdoors.
Summertime Good Fun Times
British Summertime garden parties—aka dance the night away without a mask ‘good fun-times’ have escalated with relaxed government ruling—stimulating community-led initiatives of outdoor games, theme parks and back-to-nature walks in local woodlands.
New Moon on May 30th clustering conjunct Jupiter-Mars supportive of main moves in Gemini: Mercury direct; sun/moon holding just out of reach of Taurus’s hold on Venus and Uranus—Neptune holding emotional Pisces full-on water no respite, according to lifetime tarot reader and spiritual astrologer, @isispriest David Zunker:
Double or quits: new Moon with Sun exact 11:11p.m.in super-go Gemini-with Mercury now direct-moves a supportive Taurus-Venus-Uranus conjunction, Jupiter-Mars conjunct Aries held trine by emotional Neptune in Pisces:
Watery suggestion—”We open our minds to new connections and ideas but hold on to cherished goals, while remaining flexible to new possibilities. Allow your destiny to pull you through time.” David Zunker
Back to the Land—Bay Area Trustfund Dropouts Move North—Rock Music Follows
The ‘Sixties go down in history as a “Time when if you remember it, you weren’t there”. Liverpool had the Beatles for England, just when New England captured American youth débût performances by new groups at E.coast Woodstock and W.coast Altimont. Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Carole King and some unheard of music groups [like the Doors]! were literally getting their act together.
Down in the Jungle Living in a Tent—Better than a Pre-Fab—
No Rent
Down in ?Hackney livin’ in Clover—wait till the landlord comes—All Over
pseudo Haiku take on British Radio ‘Home Service’ wartime humour Spike Milligan, The Goon Show, 1956
Magically, the San Francisco Bay Area was a magnet for music. Even the Brits ended up playing there*, while real hard-core back-to-the-Earth living attracted many groups farther north-exodus from Santa Cruz or downtown Haight-Ashbury to Mendocino and Humboldt redwood country.
As one of those who was actually there 1969-1973—a clear advantage to Boomer/pre-Boomer vintage status—tho’ some of it IS difficult to remember—was hearing groups’ first performances [Crosby, Stills, Nash débût with Richie Havens, Neil Young, Mamas&Papas]. Above pix, courtesy ©London Records owners Deram-Threshold rt. reveal Brit Moody Blues’ wild-west cave-dwelling fire-burning passion for songs “To Our Childrens Childrens Children” [Never Thought I’d Live to be a Hundred, Gotta Make the Journey Out ‘n’ In] set in a fantasy hippie den on a distant planet; clear taste in décor similar to (below) contemporary NoCal group Cat Mother’s entwined psychedelic window on their [mushroom & music] world. Cat Mother ‘and the All-night Newsboys’, seminal album ALBION DOOWAH [Strike a Match and Light Another…]©Polydor photo 1970 ©Chamberlin shows group family portrait outside their Albion, CA self-built shack/living quarters for six-man band+families.Lead singer-songwriter Michael Equine sitting on outhouse roof; Redwood clearing on Albion Ridge. Buckminster Fuller dome-home; skunk under the bed redwood treehouse, Windjammer ocean restaurant.
*Graham Nash—long-serving CSN singer-songwriter—is English ❤ New tour announced for 2022!
Within a Cone’s Throw of…Cairngorms National Park
Scotland’s Moray coast is often overlooked in a search for Britain’s largest national park: Cairngorms NP at over a million acres (1,118,720 to be exact-size of Luxembourg, or 4,528 sq km (1,748 sq miles). Within shouting distance of North Coast dolphin sighting, the coastline boasts other marvels: Brodie Castle, Cawdor (of Macbeth fame), and probably the greatest cathedral “Lantern in the North” Elgin, burned by the Wolf of Badenoch. Forres has its witch lore—Edinglassie hanging tree shows rope marks. And Valiscaulian order Pluscarden Abbey hides in the coastal ridge, keeping monastic time since 1100.
Findhorn nestles between Burghead’s largest northern Pictish hillfort and Lossiemouth military airbase, currently on standby. The spiritual community lies within ancient curtilage of 8thC Duffus Castle.
Rather like the trees and vegetables of Findhorn community’s Nature Spirits, summoned by Dorothy Maclean or Eileen Caddy’s ‘still small voice within’, Nature speaks. It takes a lifetime to hear her. It’s up to us now.
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying
Woody Allen
End Times: Fire-the-Grid to Invite Joy, Gratitude, Prayer
Terence McKenna spoke of the Eschaton—a final end-of-world spiritual event predicting human ascension to the Oversoul. He was adamant the human race has purpose toward the symbiosis of man and machine—his hyper-complexification [thinkSpock, LLAP #Mindmeld].
Both he and psychoactive dabbling colleague Ram Dass/Richard Alpert have gone up the sky elevator, but felt the human race was headed inexorably to its Omega Point. McKenna was skeptic but convinced—alongside sacred wholistic practitioners Caroline Myss, Greg Braden, Deepak Chopra, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, David Spangler/Lorian Foundation, to recharge via prayer & joy, as regular input to Fire-the-Grid. He was adamant the human race is constantly speeding up to meet its own designer future.
Native American wisdom talks of Return of the Bird Tribes (Ken Carey) just as native Wisdom-Keeper shaman Kiesha Crowther/Little Grandmother / Message for the Tribe of Many Colors describe changing times as a prelude to an awakening human condition within this new nature-loving, spiritually-based, sacred commune of souls.
We have help.
‘There is a river flowing now very fast. Some will be afraid and try to hold on to the shore. Feeling torn apart, they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above water.
And I say, look around and see who is in there with you and celebrate’
Hopi Elder Prophecy, Oraibi, Arizona 2000
Angels to Guide Us: Love the [Writer’s] Cave You’re In…
1st Wednesdays come around with alarming frequency when you’re underground—with a bunch of [Insecure] Writers banging on the door to your secret inner sanctum. But it’s worth it for the feeling of gratitude it instills in us humans who’re only just beginners in this new way the Universe likes to work it.
Keep on lovin’ what you do—has to be our angelic motto of the day-week-Mental-Awareness month. And with the trees [and Dorothy’s sweet peas] guiding us, what can we newbies do but acquiesce, go with the flow, allow. By letting (Mother) nature spirit move us where she needs us to be, we learn to be willing children in a brand-new guessing game. Let solstitial festivities begin. ©2022Marian Youngblood
In Rough Seas We Need A Little Help From Our Friends
WHEN TIMES GET TOUGH, WRITERS GET TOUGHER
Monthly Tough-it-Out Corner for Insecure Writers
I like to think that we (Insecure) writers have a little extra ball of energy we hold in reserve for exactly that moment when the rest of our world is collapsing or about to do so.
Graces three—embodied joy, beauty and mirth—as well as social ease
Now seems a good time to remind ourselves that, however insecure we may feel about the work we continually produce—the writing we LOVE—if we continue to brave it out through any storm, the rough seas will eventually bring calm.
And we may live through it!
ENTER GRACE—Or in Aegaean terms, THREE GRACES, daughters of ZEUS and EURYNOME
In Hellenist mythology Three Goddesses called the Graces represented grace, charm and beauty. Other qualities associated with them—
Aglaia represented elegance, brightness and splendor.
Thalia embodied youth, beauty and good cheer.
Euphrosyne encouraged mirth and joyfulness.
The KHARITES were conceived in Greek mythology as goddesses who brought festive joy and enhanced mortals’ love of life though their refinement and gentleness. Gracefulness and beauty in social intercourse are attributed to them. They are usually seen in the service or attendance of other divinities, as real joy exists only in circles where the individual gives up his own self and makes it his main object to afford pleasure to others.
“The less beauty is ambitious to rule, the greater is its victory”
The Three Graces, from an Ionian fresco, A.D.1stC
Qualities embodied in the Kharites. Graces, are that the less homage beauty or grace demands, the more freely is it given.
Interestingly, these same traits were imported en masse into the Christian ethic and named Hope, Faith and Charity—from Gk.KHARITES—Catholicism in particular emphasizing ‘charity’.
I mention these lovely beauties at this time as, in the midst of world events where ladies’ sovreignty is paramount, it may be our GRACE which will see us through the storm.
Moving Beyond the Masque to Face Reality
Also, coincidentally in traditional Roman Catholic calendar—still calculated by the Moon—we have only just emerged from the Fire Festival of Fat Tuesday—Mardi Gras—Festern’s E’en. We are now entering a time of human restriction—in Church timing 40 days of Lent—where our resources and resourcefulness will be called on.
We IWSG-ers know how to pull in our belts, don’t we? If our Cap’n.Alex can do it, so can we.
Therefore, Angels of Grace, Beauty, Patience, bless you—we are calling for just a little help from our friends. Thank you for being here.
©2017 Marian Youngblood
2011 Crop Circle season: Royal Fever or Beltane Ghosts?
Bosschenhoofd, Netherlands, Easter Sunday 2011
Last year, 2010, spring in Britain was ‘late’, as it followed the previous winter’s heavy freeze; so the first crop circle to emerge did not occur in the month of April, but on May 5th (Old Beltane), in alignment with an ancient sacred stronghold (and site of the first Salisbury cathedral) at Old Sarum. Its appearance was eagerly awaited by the crop circle community because the earliest farming crop to start into flower –oil seed rape, canola– was only just out of the ‘green’ stage. Previous years had brought early ripening and, by comparison, the 2010 season had a lot to make up for.
So, it seems, does the summer of 2011. A repeat winter freeze, (human) standstill and a gradual earth-warm-up and then, bam, an April ‘heatwave’. Easter Sunday, April 24th, was the warmest April day in Britain since 1949: the month of April the warmest since records began 100 years ago. Last week, the British geared up for the Royal Wedding and the weather was playing along nicely. So, it might seem, is the sense of humour of the crop circlemakers: Prince William (Wales and Windsor) married on Friday, while one week previously, on Good Friday, the first canola circle appeared in South Wales.
Canola is a plant of the brassica family which often signals the start of the crop circle season, because in Britain nothing else (barley, wheat, maize) is anywhere near its ripening stage at the end of April.
There have been exceptions. Unusually, in 2010 a Somerset bean crop was used on June 7th at Stony Littleton longbarrow near Bath to showcase the double spiral of a traditional clock mechanism, as if perhaps to highlight the concept –or urgency– of time.
Gwent Good Friday crop circle, Severn Bridge, Chepstow, photo courtesy Olivier Morel
April dates that heralded the start of a British season in three previous years had already passed–April 15, 19 and 17 for years 2007, 2008 and 2009 respectively. The weather in England has been heating up fast, however, so it was a relief when the first crop circle of this season appeared over the Easter weekend –not in Wiltshire amid the sacred landscape of ancient Saxon heritage– but in an even older landscape with genuine Brittonic origins: Gwent, where this most ancient race has left evidence of human settlement since Mesolithic times.
Coincidentally–the Circlemakers are great on synchronicity–the tight little formation appeared at Innage farm near Chepstow, a stone’s throw across the Severn Bridge from the Oldbury nuclear power plant which featured in a crop image last July and which (with less publicity) vented radioactive steam one month ago, frightening already anxious residents on both sides of the river. Public concern was quelled by nuclear authority spokesmen after locals were understandably alarmed at the announcement of new ‘works’ planned for the nuclear facility, despite the awful and uncontrollable meltdown continuing in Fukushima, Japan after last month’s earthquake and tsunami.
The new Welsh design, in a field of oil seed rape, lies only seven miles southwest of the spectre of last season’s remarkable formation –the July 18th ‘quake-vibration’ crop circle at Woolaston Grange, Gloucestershire. While lying on the same (Welsh) side of the Severn, the 2010 ‘ghost’ technically lies in England, but it also faces diagonally across the river to the nuclear plant. Between the two lies the ancient stronghold of Caes-Gwent, ‘castle of Gwent’, modern Chepstow.
Roman 'Venta', rebuilt in 1069, Castle Gwent-over-Wye is the oldest extant stone building in Britain
Once again, bang on time, the crop circle phenomenon has drawn to our attention an ancient landscape–full of sacred detail and priceless earthbound wisdom– almost totally forgotten in the 21st century.
But the Circlemakers display yet more layers to enlighten us.
Four-petal lotus of the root/base chakra in the Gwent crop circle, 23rd April 2011
“Nature’s selections (i.e. acts of God) in this country shortly”
HRH Prince Karyonagoro (Kandjeng Pangeran) January 2011.
In Vedic Kundalini the red base chakra is the lowest, most physically-driven, of the body’s energy centres. In recent years many crop circles and spiritual groups have been emphasizing the need for us, the human race, to rise above physicality and elevate ourselves at least through the second and third to the level of the (green) fourth heart-chakra, in order to prepare ourselves for our anticipated move –along with the planet Earth– into fifth-dimensional reality, nirvana, a permanent state of bliss or Ascension.
With the exception of the ‘message’ Crop designs at Crabwood Farm August 2002, Circlemakers do not usually leave us specific directions. They use hints, fractals, energy mosaics, pointers and clues to a mystery which we –in wracking our braincells and stirring up our DNA– seem to delight in trying to solve.
Gwent seems to be hinting…
It is interesting to note that the combination Muslim-Hindu population of Great Britain (England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland) has doubled in ten years, from 1.5million in 2001 to around 3 million in 2011; and outside of Leicester and Harrow, the predominant residential city-satellites for Hindu and Muslim peoples with Indian subcontinent roots (within commuting distance of London on M4 and M48) include Cardiff and Chepstow-on-Wye.
As the Circlemakers are known for their sense of humour, they might just be saying that we, the people of the British Isles, despite introduced Vedic wisdom and several seasons of implicit teachings and clues from crop circle mentors, are–in consciousness–still psychically hanging out around our own base chakra, i.e. our heads are still up our kundalini tail.
Judging by recent seasons, May 1st (Beltane) appears to be the seasonal cut-off date. Beltane means earth festival bigtime for the Circlemakers. Buddhist Wesak celebrates the Buddha’s birth on the first full moon of the Taurus cycle (this year May 17th). But May also means the Baal fire ritual of the Ancients. Once again we are being reminded (implicitly) how our ancient Brittonic ancestors valued –nay, worshipped– the sacred return of Light in the full blossoming of May Day, Beltane, with the Earth’s rise in fertility, the blossoming of trees and flowers, the Earth Mother’s return to full growth and potency. Beltane was more than just a fire festival at 15ºTaurus, the mid-point of the growth season; it was a celebration of renewal and a belief for all Mankind that the Earth was capable once again of overcoming death, dying, winter, moving through budding of new growth into full-blown summer and supreme joy of life.
It is this ancient practice, once a sacred belief system held by our pre-Christian Brittonic ancestors–kept alive in some Druidic and Wiccan traditions so often ridiculed by modern skeptics–that the crop circles seek to remind us: Life is not dead. We and the Earth are alive.
Eight/Infinity crop circle with central lovers-knot, Milk Hill 08-08-08
Milk Hill June 2009 crop circle overlay on 08-08-08 ghost
“The Measure of a Man and of an Angel will be the same in the New Jerusalem”
Revelation of John 21: 17
Wayland's Smithy '12 Towers' crop circle, reminiscent of the blades of a combine harvester, arrived 08-07-06, photo courtesy Steve Alexander
The Twelve Towers, as the Waylands formation became known, has been likened by crop circle veteran Joseph Mason to the final reckoning of the New Jerusalem in the Revelation of John: Jerusalem was said to measure 12×12=144 cubits, a sacred number meaning ‘Light’, often represented by the cube. His exposition is worth reading for its incisive content and extreme intuition. Wayland’s inate spiraling form has reappeared many times since that year, as a kind of reminder of its End-of-Days message. One also sees in it the ‘Rose Diagram’ of Florence Nightingale–the first time a woman effectively cured an epidemic by alerting the medical community (and the world) to iatrogenic deaths in foul hospital conditions in the Crimea. She made her presentation via a diagram her superiors could visualize, and her visual method changed the way humanity looked at health. In that sense the crop circle message may be our own health warning, an alert that our world may now be in imminent danger, as a result of our own pollution of earth’s fragile systems.
2006 may have been an odd year — no crop circle 06-06-06; a short season that ended abruptly on August 14th. But it did deliver some amazing pieces of inter-dimensional wonder. And from that year onwards, the world croppie audience began sitting up and paying attention.
Seasons come and go and we are learning to expect bigger and more explicit messages. What surfaces above all is the sense of wonder they impart, to thousands who have never actually sat in one or experienced the sense of ‘community’ they intuitively bring to the fields. Many have only seen them from above: the photographic message, shared so willingly and selflessly by dedicated crop circle pilots and photographers and website volunteers. In a gentle, unobtrusive way, it seems that the symbols in the fields are encouraging us to reconnect with our own sense of community–and our own sacred selves.
Vibration and Frequency and Form
All matter is in essence a group of particles vibrating at a common frequency, (a current scientific theory) and it is understandable that we human beings, made up of particles vibrating at a certain frequency, are affected by other vibrating particles–positive or negative–depending on the interaction.
This is inkeeping with current spiritual group ethos: raise your vibration to create your own mastery. The idea resonates well with the crop circles. Some see them as ‘temporary temples‘ for a modern age that has lost its sense of the Sacred. As huge, geometric temples, they seem to inspire our psyche towards wonder, a higher sense of reality and awareness. It is documented that many people feel compelled to enter formations in the fields from quite a distance away, and afterwards describe feelings of peace and wellbeing while inside the ‘sacred’ space. Many attest to lives profoundly changed in some capacity–psychologically or spiritually– by the experience.
Savernake forest 'wormholes', July 6th, 2006, photo courtesy Steve Alexander
In the magical situation created by an overnight crop sensation arriving via light, heat and sound in a ripening field, the essence of electromagnetic currents seem to be retained by the very bounds of the design’s circumference. According to BLT’s research, only gradually over a period of days–probably with traffic generated by visitors along paths leading in and out–does the energy level dissipate. There are some field formations where the energy appears so potent that its influence lingers not only through the winter after harvest, but, remarkably, for several subsequent seasons.
… as a ghostly reminder of what once was…
These are the famous crop circle ‘ghosts’.
Silbury Hill 2010: crop spectre of 2009 'Beetle' ghost
It is not just their physical form which has a remarkable effect on the humans attracted to enter crop circles. Their ghosts do as well. And, seen from the air –as we are now treated to, courtesy of the generosity of volunteers like Olivier Morel, above– crop circles are making their mark on the civilized world.
It may still be considered an ‘alternative’ world, a ‘loopy fringe’ by some, but even the media is coming around to the idea that the human race is jointly heading for some kind of quantum leap –either this year or next.
We are being treated to something in accelerated time: a reminder by Spirit of the Sacred which many of us seem to have forgotten. It is something quite wonderful, infinitely fulfilling and much needed, in order to bring our lives back into some kind of perspective. Because it is a little beyond our grasp, there is a thrill associated with this achievement. And it is well overdue.
©2011 Marian Youngblood
Fire Festivals & Persistence of Pasche
Carnival in Rio before Lent
‘First come Candlemas
Syne the New Meen
The niest Tiseday efter that
Is Festern’s E’en.
That Meen oot
An’ anither at its hicht
The niest Sunday efter that
Is aye Pasche richt.’
Ancient Scots Easter calculation. Anon.
The Calendar according to the Moon was regular as clockwork. It was reliable, you could see it in the sky and you could set your life rhythms by it. The old Scots rhyme above spoken slowly will make sense even to the least son of the soil of Ultima Thule. But non-Scots may need a little help in translation.
Festern’s E’en – as Hallowe’en – was an ancient calendar fire festival celebrated, like all pre-Christian revelry, at night. And, like Hallowe’en, it still is. Only we call it by another name: Carnival.
Translated simply, it is the evening before the ‘Feast/Festival’. With a capital F, this celebration was one of the greatest fire festivals in the Celtic Year. When it became absorbed into the Christian calendar, its importance and significance to the populace was so great, that it was deemed necessary to give it a place of prominence second only to Christmas. As such it has remained. The festival that precedes Easter is throughout the world celebrated with fire and puppetry,processional and masqued balls, dance and music and food and drink.
If you ask a South American about Carnival, ‘Carnaval’ in Portuguese, he will tell you they prepare for it all year round. In some cultures it has become almost more important than Christmas – a reversion to type, backtracking to pre-Christian times.
In Brazil, it makes complete sense to hold Carnaval precisely on its February moon date in the ancient calendar because in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires it is full-blown summer. By contrast, German Fasching, held similarly in February, is pretty chilly dancing in the noctural streets of northern Hamburg!
Terence Young's 'Thunderball' James Bond in 1965
Carnival used to be held in the Bahamas in February too, when spring is at its height and the casuarinas blow carefree along Nassau Beach. But in the summer of 1965, Chubby Broccoli and Sean Connery made a James Bond film set on Paradise Island and commissioned the Carnival Committee to stage an ‘extra’ Carnival, so they could weave festive fiery scenes into ‘Thunderball’; since then Bahamian Carnival has been a summertime festival.
London's Notting Hill Carnival
But originally, before the Gregorian calendar took over calculation and reckoning by the moon in 1582, Carnival was high festive season in that ancient stream of festivities used by Man to celebrate the return of the Light to a dark winter world.
Candlemas, as I’ve mentioned before, is the first glimpse of light waxing and adding grace to the darkest days of winter. On February 2nd – or Bride’s Day, before solar months took over as calendrical norm – the measure of light from the heavens increases to such a degree that birds begin to mate, petals on spring flowers open and the Earth softens its frozen grip.
In lunar terms, the first New Moon of the second month (Gregorian) was celebrated in every northern hemisphere culture planet-wide from prehistoric times. From Buddhist to Inuit culture the return of light to nurture the earth’s crucial growing plants was a calendar custom worth celebrating.
When Christian calendar calculators were devising Roman Church high and holy days, they took care to incorporate these ancient fire rites as an integral part of Christian culture and ‘lore’. it did not do to lose a single ‘soul’ in the transition from a pre-Christian to a Christian world.
And, as it was a long-standing tradition for local people to mark ancient quarter days – the solstices and the equinoxes – with festivals of fire, it seemed right that they should transit unaltered into the Christian calendar: marked instead with candlelight inside church buildings.
Christmas was chosen at the time of (northern) winter solstice when the ‘ignorant’ (pagan) desperately needed to celebrate the return of ‘light to the world’. Christ was called the ‘Light of the World’. The Son of the Sun.
Midsummer was fully taken up with a light celebration of its own – in northern latitudes the longest days of the year brought bountiful harvest and genuine thanksgiving by a rural population for the gifts of the earth continuously provided from midsummer through to Lammas, an August ‘cross-quarter’ day. No Church overlay was necessary; nevertheless Roman Catholicism superimposed the feast of John the Baptist on midsummer’s day and frowned heavily on pagan corn dollies and such Celtic fripperies perpetuated by an agricultural society.
The Equinoxes, however, required more serious contemplation.
Most rural (so-called ignorant) converts were aware of the movement of both sun and moon. While that may appear to us today to be rather sophisticated intellectual knowledge, it was commonplace then to note changing seasons, hours of light and dark and the phases of the moon. When equinox arrived it was – in the human mind at least – a miracle that every place on earth had exactly the same number of hours of light and dark for one earth period of 24 hours. The sun rose at 6 and set at 6 on every man, woman, child and beast on earth. The phenomenon was in itself worth celebrating. In astronomical terms, the event occurs precisely at the moment the Sun (traveling along the ecliptic) appears to cross the celestial equator, and while ancient Man may not have known that added sophistication, his life was changed by its occurrence twice in every year. In addition, he celebrated the spring (cross-quarter) festivals of Wesak, Beltane, May Day, along with any events providing an excuse for Morris and maypole dancing, The Church allowed these to continue, so long as the requisite saints were also remembered and offerings given.
While Archangel Michael was given dominion over autumnal equinox, Easter was chosen as a fitting ‘high’ celebration to take over the vernal equinoctial light-and-dark balance.
What put a spanner in the works was that – late in the seventh century – when two contemporary Christian systems were running alongside in mutual cooperation, the internal systems within the Celtic and Roman Churches came to a clash; an impasse.
Venerable Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People'
While the Synod changed lives, split families and royal houses, even intra-kingdom alliances, thereafter church festivities centred on Easter were standardized throughout the land and celebrated in accordance with Roman custom.
Easter remained the highest festival of the Christian church until the Scots Reformation when (after 1660) presbyterian austerity superimposed simplicity, reduced dogma and a return to ‘speaking to God’ directly.
For the rest of the British Isles, however, and for descendants and dependents the world over, Easter remains one of the great festivals of the Christian calendar.
Curiously, for a celebration washed, ironed and folded so neatly by successive synthesized systems – prehistoric, early-historic, pre-Christian, Celtic and Roman Christian – Easter emerges as a supreme highlight in the Church year.
Its one concession to its pagan past is that is remains to this day a date fixed according to the Moon.
And, in order not to offend other faiths which, like Anglian Eanfled, might take offence at the bulldozing approach (e.g. Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials), there is a built-in mechanism of calculation which ensures that Easter and Passover never collide and that the Christian High Festival should never occur BEFORE equinox.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans, bead capital of the world
The modern gesture to Pancake or Shrove or Fat Tuesday (Festern’s E’en) is not lost on marketers for supermarket chains who do a roaring trade in maple syrup and readymix batter. It’s the ‘stock up while the going’s good’ mentality, because the body must endure the subsequent fast of Lent for a regulation 40 days. Once more the Roman Church succeeded in condensing multiple events in Christ’s life into one festival: this fast represents the period of time He spent without food while meditating in the desert.
Nowadays, nobody questions that its immediate successor in the calendar is representational of His death and resurrection, when historically the two events happened years apart. Once again, ancient symbolism is used to gloss over detail.
‘First arrives Candlemas (Feast of Bride); Then the New Moon
The following Tuesday will be ‘Fastnacht’/Fasching or Shrove Tuesday
Allow that ‘moon’ to wax and wane
And watch till the next moon is full
The Sunday thereafter will be Easter Day.’
translation by Scots descendant, non-AnonIt worked for King Oswiu in 664. I can assure you, the calculation works still!
©2010 Marian Youngblood
The Stellar Perspective- Oriental Year of Dragon 2024 & Lunar New Year Zodiac
- Early Saints & Religious Houses in Scotland with Placenames derived from Pictish/Brittonic/Celtic
- U.S. Memorial Day Means Different Strokes for Different Folks
- Hokole’a Hawai’ian-built Canoe to Circumnavigate Pacific— 47,000 Miles over Next Four Years
- Time to Tempt Humans to Act like Telosians—Delving Deep Within to Discover our Origins As Star-People
- Canticle for a lost Nation—Pictish Roots Surface in Stone, Royal Forests & Names
- The Janus Effect—Riding into the New on an Old Horse
- Boudicca: Great Queen of the Iceni
- 2020 Backward Take on 2012: Stargate Portal to Final Quarter
- Volcanic Surprise: Take your Toys and Go Home
Solar & Geomagnetic field indicator (NOAA)
From n3kl.orgSolar X-rays:
Geomagnetic Field:
- Derilea’s Dream: Pictish essentials
- The Glory that Was Sail
- Guest Blog from the Granite Past to a Future Historian
- Boudicca: Great Queen of the Iceni
- The Sueno’s Stone Cover-up
- Maiden Stone of Bennachie
- Bibliography: The Church in Pictland
- Warlord centres of Pictland:glimpses into a lost history
- Gaels progress through Pictland via the Church
- Hello world!
Shakeout prepared
Picosecond Pulse Ripples Gold on Glass
Vibrational sound in picoseconds
Recent Comments
Marian’s SHASTA:Critical Mass
Earth speaks wolves listen—a New Age tale
bumpy ride ahead
‘Phantom’s Child’
Nano 2011 win
SHASTA: backstory
Circlemakers
Enceladus 2017
Enchantment
ShakeOut preparedness
Bourtie Kirk: 800 Years
Geometry code
- Devorguilablog: view from Pictish Citadel
- Pictish Power Centre discovered at Rhynie: stronghold in Aberdeenshire heartland
- Black Glen Cailleach/Bodach Stones threatened
- PICTISH KINGLISTS and the PICTISH CHRONICLE
- Nechtan’s Pictish Nation: 8thC Strongholds of the new religion
- Pictish inheritance in an ancient land
- Canticle for a lost Nation
- Canticle III: Nechtan of Derley
- Devorguila’s lineage: where did it go?
cosmic consciousness
Youngblood Blog 
